This document discusses different types of inspiration for concept design, including nature/biology, mathematics/geometry, and material/technique. It provides quotes from designers Iris Van Herpen and Steven Holl about finding deeper meaning and using movement in their work. The document also reviews elements of form like balance, proportion, symmetry, and encourages designing quick concept sketches based on inspired forms.
2. Learning Objectives:
•Identify different types of inspirations for
concept design
•Explain how to gain and develop design
inspiration from form using elements of design
•Design quick concept sketches based on
inspired forms
9. Material/Technique as an inspiratio
Iris Van Herpen
Wearing clothing creates an
exciting and imperative form of
self-expression. 'Form follows
function' is not a slogan with
which I concur. On the contrary,
I find that forms complement
and change the body and thus
the emotion. Movement, so
essential to and in the body, is
just as important in my work.
By bringing form, structure
and materials together in a
new manner, I try to suggest
and realize optimal tension
and movement.”
10.
11. Concept sketches
Steven Holl
‘...I try to come up
with a concept
that has a deeper
meaning than just
a form, and to use
that to tie
everything
together’
12. Elements of form
• Balance
• Proportion
• Symmetry
• Light
• Shape
• Line
• Colour
• Material
• Scale
• Rhythm
• Texture
Repetition
Pattern
Part of the body
Base it on movement
Big and small
m a t e r i a l
Hard and Soft
detail
Editor's Notes
After spying diamond-shaped wood chips on a workshop floor at London’s Kingston University—the leftovers of some architecture student, no doubt—Stefanie Nieuwenhuys was reminded of a secondhand snakeskin bag she once purchased. Scooping them up, the fashion student set to work, layering the wooden scraps onto fabric like reptilian scales.
Diana Eng based her “Miura Ori” scarf on an origami “leaf-fold” pattern invented by Koryo Miura, a Japanese space scientist who was in turn inspired by the unfurling mechanism of the hornbeam and beech leaves.Diana Eng’s scarf folds into a compact package yet “deploys” to create a voluminous wrap for your neck.Hornbeam and beech leaves are distinguished by their corrugated folds, which remain collapsed until they emerge from their buds. Eng’s wool-cashmere scarf folds into a compact package yet “deploys” to create a voluminous—and warm!—wrap for your neck.
While most of us have forgotten the basics of high-school geometry, Sarajevo student-designer AmilaHrustic finds inspiration in the ancient branch of mathematics. "Plato's Collection," an assortment of origami-esque dresses made from paper and textiles, is a mass of edges, vertices, and faces, with each dress corresponding to one of the five Platonic solids (the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron). What culminates is a series of artfully structured forms that are as pleasing to the eye as they are mathematically sublime.
